The small bays of the Amalfi coast, deep and sheltered and protected from the north winds, were obviously considered ideal places for constructing holiday villas. Such places were Positano, the Galli Islands, Victri and perhaps Cetara and also the narrow valley of Reginna Minor which housed an impressive villa, a place of retreat for its owner. Unfortunately we don't know the name of the nobleman who chose this locality for building his villa. We don't know if he was a citizen of the capital who used to come here to spend his periods of relaxation or someone who lived in one of the nearby towns, Neapolis, Nuceria or Salernum who came here to spend his leisure time. Certainly he was someone of considerable financial means, a person who enjoyed high standards of culture and taste. This is evident from the way the villa is designed and from its interior decoration. It was built at sea level and on the ground floor the wings of the internal portico enclosed a garden with fountains, a viridarium. In the centre of this garden was a formal ornamental pond laid out on the main axis of the building in line with the large monumental entrance on the seaward side of the villa and with the most important room of the main building, the central room, a big dining room-cumnympbeum around whose sides the villa was laid out symmetrically. Only a few elements are preserved of the upper floor and none of these is upstanding. Supports of the raised floor of a hypocaust system (suspensurae) and fragments of mosaic pavements survive as evidence that there was an upper storey although this has been completely destroyed by more recent buildings. Indeed an archaeological excavation was carried out prior to building the second room of the Antiquarium but found that nothing at all survived there from the period of the villa. On the evidence of the Third Pompeian Style wall paintings on the walls of the rooms the villa seems to have been built in the first years of the first century after Christ and it was restored and altered several times during its life. In the third century the triclinium was remade; big benches were added in masonry and mosaic and the painted decoration was partly renovated. We presume that it was in the following period that some of the rooms were subdivided with partition walls. The villa probably extended in terraces along the side of the hillslope, deeply cut into the side of the little valley on the right bank of the Reginna Minor. Its extent then must have been much greater than what we can actually see now. In the lower vestibule at the foot of the western staircase, the only one preserved, the presence of a partition door allows for the hypothesis that other rooms extended beyond, now lost. Certain other structures came to light during work on the canalisation of the river. They were a little way away from the known villa and they still preserved their painted walls. At the time of their discovery it was assumed they belonged to another villa, but now we think they were very probably assumer reception room (an oecus) and a corridor, which would provide parallels with other houses of the nobility of this period. The villa existed as a sumptuous holiday home for its owners for several centuries. Indeed there was no marked discontinuity in the use of the villa, even though in the 7th century AD it is very probable that it served a different kind of function.
When it was no longer in use it was perhaps buried by one of the many landslides during flooding that have periodically buried the Amalfi coast, to be rediscovered by the people living in the houses which were gradually built on top of it. Some of these had used part of it as storerooms and cellars until recent times. In 1874 L. Staibano of the Cornmissione Archeologica di Principato Ultra reported in one of his bulletins news of the discovery of Roman baths at Minori, but the official date of the discovery was in 1932 when excavations started. At the time the area was covered with little houses and gardens which gradually were demolished and excavated to bring to light the ancient buildings. In 1954 however the complex was buried once again by the flood which hit Salerno, and the Amalfi coast. With a lot of hard work it was exposed again and eventually it assumed the form that it takes today.

L.R.